Bernstein
Gulyak, Orchestra of Opera North, Stasevska, Leeds Town Hall – uncommonly excitingMonday, 09 April 2018
Bach’s Art of Fugue, or maybe Mahler’s Ninth? Nah - in my book, Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances is the greatest last work ever composed. This extraordinary piece gets everything right: a kaleidoscopic summing up of a long career which never lapses... Read more... |
Bernstein's MASS, RFH review - polymorphousness in excelsisSaturday, 07 April 2018
Live exposure to centenary composer Leonard Bernstein's anything-goes monsterpiece of 1971, as with Britten's War Requiem of the previous decade, probably shouldn't happen more than once every ten years, if only because each performance has to be... Read more... |
Bernstein triple bill, Royal Ballet review - epic ambitions unfulfilledFriday, 16 March 2018
The Royal Ballet last night presented an evening of Bernstein-scored ballets, two of them premieres by Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon and the other a revival of Liam Scarlett's 2014 Age of Anxiety. Celebrated and accessible composer;... Read more... |
Zimerman, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - a diverse Bernstein centenarySunday, 17 December 2017
Leonard Bernstein is 100 already. Actually, he’s not – his centenary falls in 2018, but the LSO, an orchestra he conducted many times, is building up to the anniversary with a series of concerts featuring his three symphonies. This performance of... Read more... |
LSO, Alsop, Barbican review - Bernstein 100 opens not with celebrations but existential angstMonday, 06 November 2017
Amen. The end – of a prayer, a service, even the Bible itself. But what, asks Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No 3, Kaddish, if “Amen” is the beginning and not the end, the start of a conversation that hears the divine word and doesn’t say “So be it”... Read more... |
Osud/Trouble in Tahiti, Opera North - swings and roundabouts in a surprising double-billThursday, 12 October 2017
It was a topsy-turvy evening. Sometimes the things you expect to turn out best disappoint, while in this case the relatively small beer yielded a true "Little Great" of a production and the best singing in Opera North's latest double bill (subject... Read more... |
‘A massive party full of treats and surprises’: Annabel Arden on six mini masterpieces at Opera NorthThursday, 14 September 2017
The first day of rehearsals for The Little Greats was thrilling and terrifying in equal measure: the casts of six shows, the whole chorus, all the creative teams and management milling around and talking nineteen to the dozen in the big, reverberant... Read more... |
On the Town review - triple threat Danny Mac and co are unmissableThursday, 01 June 2017
On 8 April 1952, screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green were chatting to Charlie Chaplin at a party when he started raving about a picture he’d seen the previous night at Sam Goldwyn’s house. It was called Singin’ in the Rain – had they... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Gražyna Bacewicz, Stravinsky, Nathan WilliamsonSaturday, 06 May 2017
Gražyna Bacewicz: Chamber Music Diana Ambache and friends (Ambache Recordings)This is an easy disc to love. Gražyna Bacewicz’s music is consistently good, often exceptionally so, and it's gratifying that new recordings on Hyperion and Chandos... Read more... |
West Side Stories: The Making of a Classic, BBC TwoTuesday, 27 December 2016
The last time BBC TV headed over to West Side Story, it landed itself with a contradiction. Christopher Swann’s 1985 fly-on-the-wall documentary The Making of West Side Story – about Leonard Bernstein recording his celebrated score with a cast of... Read more... |
Marni Nixon: 'It ended up being totally my voice'Monday, 25 July 2016
Singin’ in the Rain made much of those people in the movies whose work you don’t know you know. Set at the dawn of the talkies, it told of a star of the silent screen with the voice of a foghorn who relied on the angelic pipes of a trained singer... Read more... |
Liu, RLPO, Iorio, Philharmonic Hall, LiverpoolSunday, 13 March 2016
A double dose of Einaudi may not be the best programming idea. A world premiere in the first half and then a UK premiere in the second part of the concert was, perhaps, overegging the musical recipe. But add to that some Respighi and some Bernstein... Read more... |
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